iCloud documents and data – mountain lion improvements

When Lion came along, it came at the about same time as iOS 5. The promise was that iCloud would let us work with a document on any device and be able to continue working when moving to another device with the exact same document. The only trouble was, that it was only a half way stage to proper iCloud documents and data synchronisation. There was no trouble at all in being able to move a document from one iOS device to another, i.e. from an iPad to an iPhone. The problem was that when you wanted to work on a document created on iOS, back on your Mac you had to use a really horrible workaround to get to the iWork iCloud documents. If you wanted iCloud on Mac to let you access your data, you had to go into iCloud via a web browser interface. It was very unsatisfactory. Mountain Lion has fixed that shortcoming.

Working with iCloud documents and data effectively

At last, with the introduction of Mountain Lion we can now easily work on Pages, Numbers or Keynote iCloud iPad documents, close them down and open them up later using iCloud on Mac. There are some differences between the capabilities of the iWork applications Mac OS X versus iOS 5, but it does work now. I have tested using Pages on Mac and having the same document simultaneously open on the iPad. I was able to see that the changes I made to the document as I worked on it on the Macintosh, were reflected on the iPad version. It is very easy to set up iCloud on Mac computers and it is part of the setup process to have iCloud iPad capabilities.

iWork iCloud iPad

There have been other third-party developers of software for the Mac and the iPad that have developed applications that take advantage of iCloud on Mac and iCloud iPad. One such application is Byword. I was able to use the Byword application as my text editor on the iPad and also on the Mac as it linked into my iCloud ID. I have been typing articles into Byword on my iPad in the staff room at the school and had to close the app down to go and do some teaching. Later when back at home I opened up Byword on the Mac, then I was able to directly start working on the same application at the exact point where I left off. I am really pleased to see that with the introduction of Mountain Lion, I can now do the same thing with all of my iWork applications.

iCloud system requirements

On account of the fact that iCloud is a web-based service it can be connected to with a variety of hardware. This could be from the lowly iPod Touch to a heavy duty Mac Pro. You don’t even have to worry about how much does iCloud cost because Apple have provided a level of free services to Apple users, that most will find sufficient for purpose. Once connected up to iCloud on your Mac and IOS devices, you’ll be soon using the services of iCloud notes, iCloud reminders, as well as the synchronisation of your iWork application documents. True to form, although it did take some time before it became properly available, Apple have made it easy to deal with iCloud documents and data.